


Seven Days

by anr



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-19
Updated: 2003-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five little soldiers went to war...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Days

**Author's Note:**

> Season 7 non-speculation
> 
> "Don't Fear The Reaper" (Mutton Birds)

_All our times have come  
Here but now they're gone  
Seasons don't fear the reaper  
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain  
We can be like they are  
Come on baby, don't fear the reaper  
_

  


* * *

  


At the end of the week, he assumes the position.

It's the only thing he can do.

  


* * *

  


Monday is blurred with routine; monotonous with paper-cuts and ink-stained fingertips. Reports, theories, academic papers that he should've written five weeks ago--procrastination is a curse; he wonders which god he's pissed off this time--and forms, forms, forms. He scrawls his signature across yet another dotted line and gulps down luke-warm coffee that only seconds ago he'd hissed at for being too hot. The seconds pass so quickly; the day too slowly.

He'd give anything for a distraction.

  


* * *

  


Tuesday, for some reason, starts with a child-like rhyme that trips through his brain like a machine-gun in battle. 'Five little soldiers went to war. One got shot and then there was four...'

The tune plagues him; he hopes he's not precognitive.

Immersed in the pre-mission briefings for tomorrow's interstellar jaunt, it takes him a while to realise that he's all but missed lunch. Stomach growling, he bundles the rest of the reports under his arm and makes for the commissary at decent speed. Hopefully there'll be more than Tuna Surprise on offer.

So caught with the promise of food--or what near enough equivalent the SGC boasts--it's a surprise to see Jack and Sam ahead of him in the corridor. Instinct begs him to raise a hand and join their company but, as he hesitates, Sam hands a thick collection of folders to Jack and takes a knee. Her fingers fumble with an untied shoelace and together they laugh and smile.

The quarterback and the cheerleader, enroute to the highschool cafeteria.

"C'mon, Carter. There'll be nothing left if we don't hurry."

"Even Teal'c and Jonas, Sir, would be hard pressed to empty the SGC's food-stores all by themselves."

"That's a challenge I pray you never utter in their presence," Jack intones with mock seriousness, shaking his head when Sam rises and makes to retrieve her folders. "Nah, I've got them."

She pouts without expression. "Sir--"

"Seriously, Carter. Let an old soldier pretend he's an intellectual."

His appetite flees at her indulgent chuckle--oh, get a room--and he turns and walks away without raising a hand, without joining their company. He doubts he could have stomached it anyway: sitting with Sam and Jack and Teal'c and Jonas at a table designed only for four. The awkward shuffling of bodies and trays as they searched for a fifth chair.

No. The vending machine down the hall will suit him fine.

'Five little soldiers...'

Some day, he thinks, someone will remember there's only meant to be four.

  


* * *

  


On Wednesday they go to P6T-492 and for the first time in years he loses his stomach on wormhole disembarkment. He considers embarrassment--he's been travelling through wormholes longer than just about everyone he knows--but Sam is doing the same thing not three paces away from him; her cheeks rapidly ashening as comm-food proves the age-old theory that it really does look better coming out than going in.

He wipes bile from his lips and fumbles for his canteen; even Teal'c looks metaphorically green. Jack, of course, is ever the stalwart soldier and simply wrinkles his nose with distaste as they inhale sickly-sweet oxygen. Something is rotten on P6T-492 and the air is thick with decay.

"You ok?" asks Jack, eyes caught with his, and Sam spits away the dregs of her lunch.

"Yes, Sir."

The question was for her all along--eyesight be damned--so he's not annoyed; just nods in agreement. Jonas slurps through the wormhole; joining the team almost in afterthought. Being perfect, however, he doesn't even notice the stench.

They find the bodies in a ditch behind the Stargate dais and, standing on the edge, the smell is overpowering. Sam turns and decides to pre-emptively get rid of her dinner; he loosens the bandanna from his neck and then refastens it across his nose and mouth. It doesn't help, but the action keeps him busy.

Smallpox has been dead--no pun intended--on Earth for so long now; it amazes him that an entire civilisation could have been wiped out so efficiently from it. Dr Fraiser, he knows, is just itching to get her hands on the samples they've promised to collect. She's already theorising that a genetic marker has accelerated the naturally deadly disease to its one-hundred-percent fatality rate here on P6T-492.

Sam, most likely in defiance of her nausea, volunteers to remain at the mass-grave to take samples. Jack agrees--blatant military jackassedness: because he cares about her, all outward evidence is that he doesn't--and orders Teal'c to assist her. The rest of them move on towards the town.

Early western civilisation. Western American that is. Jack mutters with forced humour and offers up 'John Waynestown' as a name more palatial to P6T-492. His stomach rebels against the suggestion and he doesn't say anything. Jonas smiles, or maybe grimaces--he's yet to distinguish the expressions--and they pace the rest of the main drag in silence.

In the end they find only one body in the street; a small child of toddler-size. His decay-blackened cheek is pillowed on a wooden porch, chubby little arms and legs curled stomach-ward. Jack does the closest he can to vomiting: he closes his eyes and walks away, heading towards what is undoubtedly a church.

"I wouldn't..." he starts to say, knowing that inside that church is probably the last of the township--in the face of death, even an atheist is wont to look towards religion for release--but Jack either doesn't hear or doesn't care to. With the sun noon-high, the smell and sight will overpower even Jack's steel stomach; he knows this for a fact.

Jack's inside for maybe a half minute; no more, probably less. He looks away when his friend exits and starts chundering Meatloaf Surprise into the dust, one hand holding his gun, the other pressed against the church wall. Jonas wanders into a building across the road and, lacking a better option, he follows.

Brothel, saloon: could be either and is probably both. A handful of men and women--six, he counts rapidly--decorate the large room indiscriminately and he pauses beside two men, dead at a poker table near the door. He can't help but check the cards still held in post-mortem grip by the guy with his back to the door. A royal flush--no deadman's hand for this guy.

He almost chuckles at his own grave--ha, ha--humour.

His nose itches beneath the bandanna and he scratches absently; Jonas bends down beside a woman's body on the floor and starts on their--SGC--personal form of grave-robbing. 'Samples, samples, samples,' chants Dr Fraiser in his brain. He pays heed and moves to help Jonas.

Like most people who have died knowing that death was knocking, the woman's curled up, knees to chest and arms banding them tightly, face downturned and buried in the mess of limbs. "KYAG," he mutters off-hand and Jonas blinks in surprise.

"Kiag?" he repeats.

His nails swipe at his nose again and he holds a vial out for Jonas. "Yeah. Kiss Your Ass Goodbye." When Jonas blinks again, he summons up his 'lecture voice' and lays it all out for the alien, starting with colloquialisms borne of airplane crashes and finishing with, "classic foetal position. Meant to increase your chances for survival but really you're just--"

"--kissing your ass goodbye." Jonas does that smile/grimace thing again. Even close up like this, two heads bent over a diseased and rotting corpse, he can't tell the difference.

"Yeah."

  


* * *

  


Thursday passes like Monday. Molasses and engine-oil. Thick and somewhat bitter--too much sugar is always bitter--he has to ask Jonas for a book that was once his and it takes him till lunch to work up the energy for the requisite smile.

He dreamed of killing Jonas last night. A garrotting wire in one hand and Jonas' shoulder warm beneath the other. When he remembers it now, hours later, the dream still resonates like the after-effects of orgasm. He's turning into a sick little fuck, that much he knows for sure.

He also knows that his intense dislike of Jonas is irrational: the Kelownan has been nothing but kind and friendly to him. Plus, his feelings of ostracism? Likewise unjustifiable. The team has gone out of their way to include him once more.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe they're all trying too hard. The last time Sam took him aside for some one-on-one rebonding--movies and cookies at the Plaza--he'd ended up dreaming about fucking her against a wall. Thank you, but no thank you: the last thing he needs is a sister-issue that could give 'The X Files' a run for its money.

Jack wants to take him and Teal'c mud-wrestling again--more rebonding--but he's beginning to see a pattern. Excess 'return Daniel to the friends and family fold' activities seem to invite psychotic-like dreams so it's probably in his best interest if he begs off. At least for the time being.

The last thing he needs is a dream where he's the filling in a Jack/Teal'c sandwich.

  


* * *

  


There's obligatory Friday night drinks because, despite SG1's current ten-days-on four-days-off roster, it's apparently important for them to at least pretend they're normal Monday-to-Friday nine-to-five people. One soldier, two aliens and three doctors fidget about a too-small table that's designed for three stools, not six adults.

Teal'c and Sam are discussing sports. Jack's fiddling with abandoned lemon and lime slices. Dr Fraiser's elbow has been wedged in his ribs since the first round of beers and Jonas' thigh pressed against his since the third. He draws chevrons in the puddles of condensation on the tabletop; feels grains of salt from peanuts and the girls round of tequila shots scatter under his forefinger.

"Daniel! Hey, Daniel!"

He blinks when Jack thrusts his hand against his nose, snapping fingers as if the decibel-breaking shout wasn't enough. His fingers smell of lemon--the Colonel has got to stop pinching his 2IC's fruit. "Yes, Jack?" he asks patiently.

His friend shoots off a rapid barrage of questions pertaining to subjects as mixed as Jonas and Teal'c's drinks and he tries to follow as best he can. He's either meant to provide a dissertation on the uses of alcohol in mythology or the punchline to Jack's latest joke. A bathroom break beckons so he chooses the dissertation--less thought required--and excuses himself from the table when they all start groaning happily.

Who're they trying to kid, anyway? He already knows he's the punchline.

  


* * *

  


Anubis' Jaffa capture the team on Saturday and throw them into a stereotypical Goa'uld holding cell. Forcefield barriers and gold walls--he bides the time by finding Stargate addresses in the symbolled wallpaper. One by one they're led away for questioning that will prove more fatal than a celebrity episode of Jeopardy. If only, he thinks dryly, the worst they could lose is their reputations.

He tries to remember Sam and Teal'c and Jack like they were last night. Liquored up and laughing hard. Teal'c with a Pink Squirrel; Sam and Janet doing shot after shot, tequila dripping down the backs of their hands and off their chins. Jack sculling a beer and banging his fist on the tabletop with each declaration like an audible exclamation mark.

He'd remember Jonas--maybe, probably--but Jonas is still here.

  


* * *

  


Sunday starts before Saturday has properly finished and he's dragged from the cell by the scruff of his neck. He wants to ask if this--interrogation, execution, whatever--can be done outside--one last look at the sun, moon, whatever--but declines. The Jaffa escorting him could give Teal'c a run for his money in an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like competition.

No questions for him. He's either not worth the effort--unlikely, a Goa'uld like Anubis would be big on torturing everyone, even if just for the hell of it--or someone else in his team has already given Anubis what he wants. He doesn't want to lay bets--gambling is beneath a descended being--but Jonas is the only one still alive out of his team.

"Hey," says the alive one from bended knees. Great. He almost hopes his psychosis does take this image into tonight's dreamland: Jonas proposing marriage would complete his insanity so very nicely.

"Hey," he responds in Jack-like monosyllabism, pre-empting the staff weapon nudge in his spine by gracefully kneeling of his own accord. A Jaffa jabs him anyway, just because he can.

Anubis decrees their execution with all the pomp befitting a Goa'uld--he actually has to bite his tongue to stop from reciting it too--and a Jaffa moves to stand between him and Jonas.

"Think we'll get a last request?" asks Jonas and he can't help but wince with sympathy when the Jaffa slams the weapon into Jonas' face, silencing him. Not wanting a similar caress, he just shrugs with matching wryness.

Movements slow and cautious, Jonas curls into himself; head kept raised long enough to smile at him. His teeth are stained with blood. "KYAG," he states, and he can't help but return the smile. It's not a grimace, after all.

"Yeah."

Then Jonas drops his head and the top of his skull is reduced to charred grey-matter an instant later.

His limbs shake with adrenaline; fear more viscous than blood in his veins. 'Five little soldiers went to war...' sings a voice in his head. He thinks it's Dr Fraiser's.

He assumes the position.

It's the only thing he can do.

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/39801.html>


End file.
